Time to check in after 30 days of intermittent fasting and what could charitably be called ‘sporadic workouts’<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before I started anything I got a blood test at LabCorp designed for men’s health. I needed a baseline to understand where my health was – and by checking every 60 days I can track the improvement (hopefully) to my overall health. [link to posts about bloodwork]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I decided to ease into fasting and start with an 18:6 program where I eat my first meal around noon and finish eating by 6 pm. This level of fasting was a bit rough in the first few weeks but once I settled into a new habit it slowly became easier and easier. Now I sometimes get busy and don’t feel hungry until way past the 18 hour mark and I’ve stopped late night snacking altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I really didn’t get to workout too much in January – the first few weeks were a chaotic mix of someone in the house being really sick and me struggling with some kind of bronchitis \/ sinusitis 1-2 punch. Since I couldn’t breath or exert myself without a coughing fit cardio was out of the question but I did start the lifting regimen I plan on following throughout the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I started very very slowly with light weights – I haven’t lifted since I hurt my shoulder almost 18 months ago and while the shoulder feels fine now I really didn’t want to start the year re-injuring it. I also need to accept at my age jumping into heavy weights almost assuredly will end up in a major injury. Slowly raising the weights also lets me make visible progress while keeping the soreness \/ lactic buildup to a minimum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the lifting program I split it into a three day push\/pull split with a focus on compound exercises to start each set (the heavy lifts) training the entire body over the three days. [see lifting program post for details if you are curious] (link here)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So – what was the result of month 1 of the ‘Blow it up and glow it up’? I lost 23 pounds.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I know – I was shocked at that number as well . I wasn’t starving myself – I was eating healthier yes, but not at a starvation level – I just compressed my eating into that 6 hour window. I occasionally mixed in a burger, some pizza, and even some snacks during that window and the power of intermittent fasting seems to have powered through those poor food choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only major change I made to my diet was eliminating ultra processed foods and foods with added sugar. The only exemption was having a single dessert on Saturday, preferably one that I made myself (however, this past week were some delicious girl scout cookies because thin mints are amazing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also did a ton of research about which supplements actually work and aren’t a waste of money \/ snake oil and created a supplement stack to help my old self recover from the workouts. [supplement stack link]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall amazing progress in the first month – I was hoping for 8-10 pounds a month and while I’m sure some of that 23 pounds is water – it’s still weight I’m not carrying around – also I’m hoping sticking to the weight training will spare some of the muscle\/bone loss from rapid weight loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s hoping February is as successful!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Time to check in after 30 days of intermittent fasting and what could charitably be called ‘sporadic workouts’ Before I started anything I got a blood test at LabCorp designed for men’s health. I needed a baseline to understand where my health was – and by checking every 60 days I can track the improvement…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287],"tags":[290,121,291,179,284],"class_list":["post-1841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-glowup","tag-check-in","tag-health","tag-lifting","tag-nutrition","tag-supplements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1841"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1843,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841\/revisions\/1843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonypanariello.com\/blog\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}